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I admit I am a bit slow on the uptake, with these forums. I posted the question, "Can a chip amplifier sound as good as regular amp?" but I thought the thread was the Computer Audiophile on the Cheap thread--it was the DAC thread... ooops.

 

Anyhow, that drew a number of folks into a exchange of ideas, and at last count, 11 pages of responses.

 

I learned a lot from the experience. My $40 Nobsound Class D amp doesn't sound as good as the h/k 330i, so the answer is:

 

'No, not for $40.'

 

I did find another USA manufacturer  in Class D and read about a 699 GBPound unit from Britain. All in good fun.

 

On this thread, my goal is to talk about not how MUCH a good sounding stereo costs, but rather, how good of a sound can I get out of the stereo I have.  Not my original idea, I think it was expressed by folks at Schiit. I like their Modi 2 DAC for $99. That means anyone with a computer, an amplifier/receiver, and a pair of decent speakers can start hearing music differently.

 

Computer Audiophile on the Cheap is a lifestyle. Hugh Hefner popularized the Playboy mystique. We aren't that glamorous.

 

We talk about the iFi iPurifier2 with it's100x noise cancellation, stolen for civilian audiophiles from Military components used on fighters...I guess since they have a picture of a jet on the box.  At $109, it is rated as a a "MUST BUY" Accessory if a computer is part of the signal path.

 

Folks, you don't have to mortgage the children's future with a home stereo system. You can really enjoy music, knowing you did it on the Cheap...And it sounds better than you can ever recall hearing the music.

hk330i.jpg

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7 hours ago, Melvin said:

Glad to see you started another CAotC thread @bigbob .. I'll be following for sure. The entry point for good sound these days makes our hobby much more accessible to anyone with even a passing interest in hifi. The more the merrier!

 

Just so we are clear, please list your current system components. Oh, and please ask Chris to change "Compuer" to "Computer" in the thread title :D.

 

 

Thanks and Done!

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7 hours ago, esldude said:

Do you plan to play from a computer?  If it is a desktop a Xonar sound card might be cost effective. 

 

So I guess the question is, what are you keeping and what are you willing or able to change? Are we talking second hand as well as new.

 

Everything is computer based. The Schiit Modi 2 at $99 was a good choice, better than the iFi nano LE, in my opinion, unless you want a portable headphone amp built into your DAC.

 

At this point, I am interested in Amplifiers. The experiment with the Cheapest was a learning experience.

 

"Thank you for your interest in the ACA kit.

At the moment, we don't have an estimate date for when new stocks for the ACA kit arrive.

To get a notification for when the ACA kit becomes available, please click on the EMAIL ME WHEN AVAILABLE button."- diyAudioStore

 

 

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2 hours ago, esldude said:

If you were starting from scratch and with my opinion speakers are most important, I would tout yet again those JBL LSR305s.  Crazy good, and crazy cheap.  Powered speaker with active DSP crossovers built in for $260/pr or sometimes a bit less.  Add say your Modi 2 (assuming it is good haven't heard one) and you have quite a good sounding system.  Or say the 301 Teac DAC/pre/headphone unit or an Emotiva or similar.

 

You'll have seriously good sound for a relative pittance.  No it won't equal spending $2k or more, but it is better sound than ever before possible for this amount of money.  And super simple.  Pick a DAC, get the speakers, connect them and add a computer or tablet or phone or portable player.  Off you go with good music.

 

One of the drawbacks to the iFi nano LE was the amplification stage for headphones. The Schiit Modi 2, at $99 is a very-entry level external DAC, and it sounds better than the iFi, on my system.

I am using the Schiit SYS passive pre-amp for volume control, and my receiver is just pushing out it's 20w/channel turned up half. I have tried different variations--the SYS at half way, the receiver turned up full, the SYS at halfway and the receiver at half-way, which gives me good control as the recording levels vary from file to file. When I was using the nano LE, that put a third volume control in the signal path, and I rightly assumed that too many Pots spoiled the soup. With the nano, the sound was crispy, almost edgy.

 

I think the Modi 2 is a good pure external DAC for what I am doing. The next price point up is Schiit's Bifrost at $399, which is out of my financial reach.

Compared to my 'system', $2K would be a World away-- I figure I have invested a little more than $500, and that includes the Advents new in 1975 at $125 a pair and the re-foam in 1990.

 

Since my love of Music centered around the 24-bit/96hz Soundboard recordings of my beloved Grateful Dead, I did make one upgrade to the speaker screens--with a tee-shirt I bought a year ago at Hippie Fest.

 

DSC08753_v1.JPG

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14 hours ago, Sam Lord said:

I *really* like this thread, thank you.  In fact I hope that Chris opens a whole subforum dedicated to budget gear.  I've been getting lots of budget items recently as gifts, so I've been studying... and urge everybody to look around for reviews.  For example...

 

The Schiit "Mimby" (slang for "Modi Multiibit"), how did you miss this one?  At $250 new it's a monster, and by all accounts better than the base Bifrost.  I had the $600 Bimby and found it magnificent, way better than the very good base Bifrost Uber/USB2 which I upgraded (at $250) to multibit.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

When I bought the Modi 2, I really didn't consider the Multibit because of the price. I was replacing a AQ Dragonfly v1.2, which I bought on close-out for $79. I guess I can plead ignorance of what "Multibit" meant at that time. But, I might consider it as an upgrade instead of the Bifrost...Thanks for the tip!

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40 minutes ago, The Computer Audiophile said:

This is definitely a topic of interest for me. Some of us were discussing high prices and lack of value at Axpona this weekend. 

 

I am glad I have touched upon an area of interest. The "CAotC" lifestyle is really about value vs. prestige.

 

Sure, the industry needs to only sell a few hundred items at the top-end of the line, and that is a marketplace it shares with names like Maserati and Bentley -- and those marques do the exact same thing as a Hyundi or a Honda. 

 

Many will cite the placebo effect-- that if you spend $250,000 on a pair of speakers, I am pretty sure they WILL sound better to you than another pair of less expensive speakers.

 

Now, is the great times for Stereo, in my opinion because of digital sources. Will vinyl be replaced? No, nor should that even be an argument. Two different issues.

 

For me the convenience of building a playlist from my library of files, and sitting back and listening sure beats getting up to turn over a LP. And who spends $2,300 on a device to remove dust and dirt from a vinyl pressing anyhow?

 

It is not "Us vs. Them" but that also means we need to be considerate that not everyone is an Audio Engineer or a Trust-funded Audiophile.

 

I am glad there is an interest in Affordable Audio, Vintage Electronics, Vintage speaker systems, and a common bond amongst us.

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I don't know how many folks would actually "worry" about getting into big bucks territory. This assumes they have the resources to pull together a big bucks system.

 

Many of us enjoy listening to music, and what we have to work with might be a 30-year old receiver, and the huge speakers we bought in College.

 

Inexpensive tweaks--like isolation devices to get the speakers up off the floor will make any speaker sound better. If the driver of the woofer is trying to energize the hardwood floor, it is not going to have a good, well-defined bass response. I see brass points for sale for $30. 

 

If you are using the interconnects that came with the CD player, you can improve the SQ with a better set, without breaking the bank.

 

Many of the discussions about high-end systems fall into subjective opinions. You like the sound, or you think it is lacking.

 

It is hard to quantify a subjective opinion. Reading some reports from the Audio show blames the rooms for the sound they heard. Well, DUH!

 

A friend of mine had a pair of "Voice of the Theatre" loudspeakers, driven by the legendary Western Electric tube amplifiers. And his listening room was the hay loft in his barn. And I have never heard a system sound as sweet. I don't think many would want to build a barn, to listen to music, but at the price listed for some of the components we read about--you could build the house, and the barn.

 

I live in a small apartment. I don't have bean-bags in the corners of the ceiling, or other "treatments". As a matter of fact, this apartment is so small, if I turn up the volume, I can watch the windows vibrate...

 

"Make the Stereo you have sound the best it can..." a very simple goal.

121516_altec_2.jpg

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4 hours ago, 4est said:

 

I take it you have not looked at the prices of Western Electric gear, or Altec for that matter

 

I think you were missing my point... he had it set-up in the hay loft of his barn. I am not interested in either a Altec or Western Electric tube amp, so, no I haven't been keeping up with their prices.

 

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4 hours ago, Sam Lord said:

But just FYI, you can create an ultrasonic cleaning station for $200, or buy a super convenient off-the-shelf model for $500.  Check Analog Corner for reports.

 

I don't have a turntable or a collection of LPs, nor do I have any desire for either. None of my digital library is at risk for dust, none have pops and clicks and I don't have to turn anything over every 20 minutes.

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53 minutes ago, 4est said:

 

Oh, silly me thought it was his equipment that made it sound good...

 

It was the equipment that made it sound so sweet. He was a professional musician, and we only listened to classical, up in the hay loft.

 

Considering the Altecs came out of a theater as did the WE tube amps also was salvaged from a theater that had modernized. All I remember was friend taking me out to his barn, and I was gobsmacked--40 years before it was a word. It was if we were in the orchestra pit, and the musicians were surrounding us. I have yet to hear a stereo rig that does that.

 

I have another Audiophile friend that bought a weird teak sculpture, which is run by an Apple iPad-- to  "tune the room". He claims he can hear a difference, but he also has dots on the walls and pillows up in the room corners, all in an effort to adjust the room to optimum listen-ability. Some of it sounds like snake-oil was sold to a willing sucker.

 

My most recent upgrade was running a double strand of 16g copper wire from the cold water pipe under the sink, to the ground terminal on the receiver. This whole apartment doesn't have a grounded outlet--or at least the three prong outlets gave a false reading when the maintenance man check them out. It is a hack, but it works.

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During my career, I was a Photojournalist, working with Reuters, the British News Agency.

We knew that "A picture is worth a Thousand words" and everyone one of our images was seen by over 1 Billion persons globally on a daily basis.

Certain images are burned into minds, and are termed "iconic".

Nick Ut's photo of a Vietnamese girl running from a napalm attack, John Filo's Crying Girl at Kent State, and Eddie Adams image of a Viet Cong suspect executed by a South Vietnamese police officer--those three images did MORE to end US involvement in that war that all the protests IMHO. They crawled into the psyche of the American viewer.

 

There are audio recordings that are 'iconic'. There are albums we go back to, every time we add a component or a tweak, because we have heard them so many times that they have become our standard references on which we gauge whether we hear a difference.

 

To be an Audiophile, we share a love for High Fidelity. We appreciate a well-produced, well-recorded performance of Music. That love transcends the "zeros and ones" of a digital file, and forces us to appreciate other parameters to describe our experience.

 

Many of you folks understand Music from the world of an Audio engineer, or an Electronics engineer, and reading some posts in the forums blows right over my head-- it would be like me trying to explain how angle of incidence affects the mood of a photograph.

 

The purpose of this post is to ask the Music lovers in our Community to list three albums from three artists which are your standard reference.

 

What are the 'iconic' recordings that you use to judge the sound and quality of your stereo experience.

 

I start with these:

 

1. Pictures at an Exhibition  is a suite of ten pieces (plus a recurring, varied Promenade) composed for the piano by Russian composer Modest Mussorgsky in 1874.  I prefer the Karajan, Berliner Philharmoniker recording.

 

2. Meddle is the sixth studio album by English progressive rock group Pink Floyd.

 

3. Legend is a compilation album by Bob Marley and the Wailers, released in 1984 by Island Records.

 

All are 24/192 FLAC recordings, and sound beautiful on my "Computer Audiophile on the Cheap" system.

 

Now, list your three albums, because discovering new, good recordings is the fun of being an Audiophile.

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  • 9 months later...

High fidelity (often shortened to hi-fi or hifi) reproduction is a term used by home stereo listeners, audiophiles and home audio enthusiasts to refer to high-quality reproduction of sound to distinguish it from the lower quality sound produced by inexpensive audio equipment, or the inferior quality of sound reproduction that can be heard in recordings made until the late 1940s.

Ideally, high-fidelity equipment has inaudible noise and distortion, and a flat (neutral, uncolored) frequency response within the intended frequency range.--Wikipedia

 

 

Wow, what an almost year it has been for the Computer Audiophile on the Cheap.

 

Everything has changed. The harman/kardon i330 was given away, and the Yamaha is now in the back bedroom.

The living room /listening room features a Denon AVR 2805 with a pure direct circuit. The Advents are connected by a 1-meter pair of Nordost Valhalla speaker ribbons with XOT crossover transducers.

 

I am testing an iFi iOne DAC with Bluetooth. It has the AMR Active Noise Cancellation built-in and has NO headphone amplifier on board. The Schiit Modi 2 is back with the Yamaha, and it has an iFi iPurifier2 on it.

I am running those amazing $50/pair Dayton Audio AMT loudspeakers on stands back in the bedroom.

 

I just bought the new quad-core Raspberry Pi to be my dedicated music server. I am waiting for a replacement remote for my Samsung Smart TV so I can tell it to be an HDMI monitor. I can install software and get the RaspPi ready for Volumio,  a headless app, that will give me control of the system from my Moto-g.

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